Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Leonidas of Sparta: A Heroic King is the third installment in the trilogy covering the
life of the famous Spartan king, written by Helena Schrader. I have not had a
chance to read the first two books but jumped at the chance to read this one
because I wanted to see how Helena would approach the Battle of Thermopylae.

Helena
Schrader graduated with honors in History from the University of Michigan and
has earned a PhD in History from the University of Hamburg. She has published
several books since 1993, both fiction and non-fiction. Among the former are
several historical novels including six on ancient Sparta. She maintains a blog
titled Sparta Reconsidered.

I
approached A Heroic King as a person knowledgeable on the subject matter but
curious about how the author would weave fact and fiction together. Would the
story be convincing? Spartan names take some getting used to and I found myself
struggling through the first two dozen pages as I tried to get to know the many
characters – both historically familiar and unfamiliar. Knowledge of the
vocabulary of Sparta was certainly helpful during this early part of the read.

Once the
names were locked in, things moved along at a fine rhythm. There were many
wonderful scenes -- Leonidas' election, the sacrificial ambassador’s trip to
see Xerxes, and Gorgo’s shopping trip in Athens, to name a few. For a historical
novel to be successful, you have to feel seamlessly transported back in time by
the author. Then you can live the story and absorb the history along the way. Helena
has successfully met this requirement by accurately capturing the lives and
experiences of the people of Lacedaemon.

The
Battle of Thermopylae was riveting – not mere choreography like the movie 300,
but real tension created by 300 men trying to survive but also prepared to die.
The reader has a first row seat as the realization of no escape transforms
Leonidas and his men into determined heroes.

In sum,
The Heroic King is a brilliantly written novel that gives life to one of the
great cultures of history. Its mixture of drama and adventure can carry the
reader forward at whatever pace he or she may desire.

My only
concern in recommending the novel is for the reader who knows nothing of Sparta
– whether they will have the perseverance to work through the new vocabulary. Like
the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, I say “Don’t judge this novel by
its first two dozen pages”. Acclimate yourself and move on to a great
adventure.

Friday, November 30, 2012

In the previous post, I outlined the life cycle of the Polis
and included a chronology showing the significant events it its history. The
chronology had one notation that was not mentioned in the post (Solon), so I am
going to correct that omission here.

Solon was one of the most important figures of his time and
on a short list of the greatest Greek politicians. He was an educated
aristocrat, successful businessman, and poet. According to Plutarch, Solon had
four character traits seldom found in one man: patriotism, integrity, political
genius, and intelligence. And we must not leave out ambition – he wanted the
job of saving the Athenian state.

As previously
discussed, the Period of Tyrants dated from ~ 650 B.C. to 510 B.C. when Hippias
was expelled from Athens. Solon was active during the middle of this period.

In 632 B.C, the opportunist Cylon tried to establish himself
as a tyrant of, but failed. He had achieved victory at the Olympic Games and
used his fame to gather supporters and take control of the Acropolis. Lured out
of hiding with the promises of a pardon, Cylon and his followers were murdered
by members of the aristocratic Alcmeonidae family. Athens was not ready to
tolerate a tyrant.

A decade later in 621 B.C. the citizens of Athens asked a
legislator named Draco to codify Athenian law for the first time. The results
of his work were unduly harsh specifying the death penalty for even minor
offences.

“…he considered these lesser crimes to deserve it, and he had
no greater punishment for more important ones."

By 600 B.C, Athenian politics was in complete disarray. The
last decades had seen their pottery trade fall behind its Corinthian
competition, and the aristocratic class had become more ruthless. Poor farmers
became serfs of the rich when they could not pay their debts, and the landless
were enslaved and sold abroad. Territorial groups could not be controlled by
the weak central government.

As Plutarch tells it, “The state was divided into as many
factions as there were parts of the country, for the Diakrii, or mountaineers,
favored democracy; the Pedioei, oligarchy; while those who dwelt along the
seashore, called Parali, preferred a constitution midway between these two
forms, and thus prevented either of the other parties from carrying their
point. Moreover, the state was on the verge of revolution, because of the
excessive poverty of some citizens, and the enormous wealth of others, and it
appeared that the only means of putting an end to these disorders was by
establishing an absolute despotism.”

Enter Solon.

Again Plutarch sets the stage.

“In this position of affairs, the most sensible men in
Athens perceived that Solon was a person who shared the vices of neither
faction, as he took no part in the oppressive conduct of the wealthy, and yet
had sufficient fortune to save him from the straits to which the poor were
reduced. In consequence of this, they begged him to come forward and end their
disputes.

But Phanias of Lesbos says that Solon deceived both parties,
in order to save the state, promising the poor a redistribution of lands, and
the rich a confirmation of their securities. However, Solon himself tells us
that it was with reluctance that he interfered, as he was threatened by the
avarice of the one party, and the desperation of the other. He was chosen Archon
next after Philombrotus (594 B.C.), to act as an arbitrator and lawgiver at
once, because the rich had confidence in him as a man of easy fortune, and the
poor trusted him as a good man. It is said also that a saying which he had let
fall some time before, that "equality does not breed strife," was
much circulated at the time, and pleased both parties, because the rich thought
it meant that property should be distributed according to merit and desert,
while the poor thought it meant according to rule and measure. Both parties
were now elate with hope, and their
leaders urged Solon to seize the supreme power in the state, of which he
was practically possessed, and make himself king.”

Solon consulted the Oracle at Delphi which said,

“Take thou the helm, the vessel guide,

Athens will rally to thy side.”

But he refused the monarchy saying in his own verse,

"Not a clever man was Solon, not a calculating mind,

For he would not take the kingdom, which the gods to him
inclined,

In his net he caught the prey, but would not draw it forth
to land,

Overpowered by his terrors, feeble both of heart and hand;

For a man of greater spirit would have occupied the throne,

Proud to be the Lord of Athens, though 'twere for a day
alone,

Though the next day he and his into oblivion were
thrown."

As senior Archon, Solon chose to proceed quietly to
administer so as to

Not disturb
or overset the state

Because if he did he would not have sufficient power to
re-constitute and organize again. To rule properly, Solon thought it best to “Combine
force and justice together”.

So he started changing Laws. What laws? Nearly all of them.

Solon cancelled all debts and obligations in Athens. He repealed
the dreaded Draconian criminal code and substituted his own. Then he wrote a
new constitution. Those born of free Attican parents would become citizens of Athens.

The populace would be divided into four classes based on
wealth with the top three classes eligible for the magistracies formerly only
available to the aristocrats. The lowest class was barred from magistracies but
allowed to serve on juries. Solon also made decisions of the magistrate’s court
subject to appeal to a special court (Heliaia) which had no judge.

And on he went. He suppressed dowries, barred men from
speaking evil of the dead, allowed wills to give property to a friend if no
relative was available, regulated the journeys of women, encouraged trade,
barred exports except for oil, and allowed foreigners to become Athenian citizens.

Solon was no democrat,
because he believed in the reality of the distribution of wealth. Anticipating
the Roman Republic, which was ninety
years in the future, he rejected equality – choosing instead a way of creating
a balance between the classes. He believed the creation of a middle class would
neutralize the conflict between the upper and lower, precisely the role the
Knights would take in Republican Rome.

Solon’s year in power came to an end with passions high, yet
there was enough support in each class for his reforms to keep the Polis
stable. He ordered the new laws to be in force for one hundred years, and then,
to the surprise of many, resigned his post and left Athens for ten years.

The balance of forces did not last. Returning to Athens as an old man in
561, Solon witnessed Peisistratus become a tyrant. He died two years later and
his ashes were scattered around the Island of Salamis. When the last tyrant,
Hippias, was exiled in 510 B.C, the first act of the Athenian government was to
re-institute the laws of Solon.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

I have written several articles about the Polis -- mainly focused
on pieces of its history. It’s hard to put the tell the whole story given the
space limits of a blog, but I’ve decided to make the attempt here because the
Polis is so important to Western Civilization as the model for modern political
systems and Democracy. We’ll conserve space by sticking to the main inflection
points in its history – the forces that propelled its development forward.

One more thing. We discuss the Polis generically until the
rise of Athens because its evolution occurred across the Greek peninsula. One
of the reasons for the success of the Polis was the number of cities and towns
that served as laboratories for its development. Eventually Athens would become
the standard and take the structure of the Polis to its endpoint.

We start with the chronology shown above. By 1100 B.C,
Mycenae had fallen, dragging the Greek world into its own version of the Dark Ages.
It took three hundred years to recover. During those three centuries, slowly
but surely, a political system was created.

Themilitary
leader, or Basileus, was the first
step. No royalty survived the Mycenaean collapse, so all that remained were aristocrats
who possessed wealth but no legitimacy to rule. The Basileus, were not wealthy,
but emerged because they possessed an uncommon skill – military prowess. The
wealthy granted them one and only one power – control of the militia, and that
power was confined to the local village or town -- not beyond. With the
Basileus well established, the Greeks could have gone in either of two
directions politically: strengthening
collective action through a complex political organization or moving toward
personal leadership. There is evidence that the latter was attempted; that the Basileus became more powerful. But that
path was a dead end and they were eventually replaced by an administrator type
– similar to the Archons of Athens. The Basileus lacked the historical
requirements for personal leadership – wealth, a significant following among
the people, and precedent. Ultimately, the people were unwilling to cede power
and make them kings. Instead, they kept power for themselves and elected
administrators they could control.

Even as a dead end, the Basileus was important to the future
development of the Polis because it was the first structural element of an
non-hereditary authority – a building block of the future Polis.

In the first half of the Archaic Period, which began in 800
B.C, the threads of the new political system became tighter as a result of two
forces: aristocratic power and the
unification of the lower class. In the former case, the aristocrats became
a power class by banding together based on common interests and employing
administrative types to carry out the operations of a rudimentary government. Concurrently,
the tactical view of battle evolved and the Phalanx became the Greek’s prime military formation. As I have discussed
in previous articles, the Phalanx gave power to the common people because it
was a large scale military organization of equals. One they realized what they
had, the people began asking for a part in government. The result was power
sharing between themselves and the aristocrats.

By 650 B.C. the young Polis was functional but weak -- its
structure lacking the power and legitimacy to exercise complete authority over
the society. The delicate political balance between the aristocrats and the
common people had produced a stalemate. It wasn’t long before that balance was
upset by the aristocrats, who became more oppressive, driving popular support away
from them and toward anyone who would stand for the people. Ultimately, tyrants stepped in and took power for
themselves. The incubator of Democracy had rejected pure aristocratic power as
an unworkable political system.

Oddly, the tyrants turned out to be benign rulers for the
most part. They did not abuse their power but, instead, found ways to move their
society forward. Herodotus
wrote,

“not having
disturbed the existing magistrates nor changed the ancient laws… they
administered the State under that constitution of things which was already
established, ordering it fairly and well”

Aristotle wrote,
of Peisistratus, that “his administration was temperate…and more like
constitutional government than a tyranny.”

Tyrants came to power because the early Polis did not have
enough democracy in it to foster the long term stability that would come later.
In the end, they corrupted themselves by attempting to prolong control as
hereditary models but failed because of uneven governance. Fortunately, the Polis had not retrogressed, so it
did not have to regain ground before it could advance again.

So we move on to the period, starting in 510 B.C, where the Polis rises to its
zenith, helped along by visionaries
who sought to build a structure that would be stable, enduring, and divide
power fairly. The strength of the Polis would often be tested over the next
eighty years, and it would survive.

The first
visionary, Clisthenes, blocked an
effort by Isagoras to reverse the rising independence of the lower classes in
508 B.C. Clisthenes intended to permanently break the power of local social
units in favor of the state, and to make sure power was permanently placed in
the hands of the people. He organized the populace into demes or political units numbering about 140, requiring that each
tribe contain demes located in the country, the city, and the coast so that
self-interest would be equally distributed.

He also
established a council of 500, consisting of 50 men from each tribe. The 500
were chosen by lot to make insure their independence. The council had
responsibility for preparing bills for the assembly and supervising public business.

These reforms
were tested immediately when Athens was attacked by Boetia and Chalcis in 506
B.C. Both were defeated and the balance between the classes held. The Polis was
further strengthened by the wars with Persia. When Athens was attacked and
occupied in 480 B.C, unity among the people, created to fight a common enemy,
strengthened the bond between them and kept the Athenian political system
together.

The second
important Athenian visionary was Pericles,
who instituted a variety of reforms after 461 B.C. An aristocrat, Pericles had
the gifts of intelligence and leadership. He became the leader of the council
of ten generals and served as the de facto leader of Athens until his death from
the plague in 429 B.C. During his tenure, Pericles passed laws allowing poor
citizens to attend plays for free, and began a system of compensation for
magistrates and jurors. This allowed a broader spectrum of the populace to
participate in government. He also lowered the property qualification for the
archonship to help breakup the monopoly of the aristocratic class. The time of
Pericles has been labeled the “Golden Age” of Athens because the stable, open
democracy provided the fuel for continued Athenian intellectual development.

Still, there is a
paradox in the label, because the high point of the Polis was also the
beginning of the end. The accomplishments of the Athenians made them arrogant
and they abused their partners in the Delan League. Hubris had them believing
they could defeat the Spartan Army so they launched the Peloponnesean War in
431 B.C, only to see their political system destroyed after twenty seven years
of conflict.

With Athens weak, Sparta felt it had to control Greece to
protect itself but did not have the skill. She was engaged in a series of
adventures during the thirty year period after the Peloponnesian War until
Leuctra, when her military might was destroyed for forever. Thebes stepped in
and spent nine years (371-62) trying to control northern Greece, but following the
Battle of Mantinea its hegemony came to an end. Greece was now vulnerable as a
divided people and that division would leave it ripe for the taking by an
autocrat.

Philip of Macedonia was the man whose strong will would
overcome a fragmented Greece. The Athenians, led by Demosthenes, tried their
best to oppose him, but the end for Athens came at the Battle of Chaeronea in
338 B.C. As victor, Philip convened the League of Corinth, including all the
Greek powers except Sparta who refused
to participate. Now the Polis had reached the end of its life,
superseded by autocratic rule. The reign of Philip and his son Alexander, the
Diodochi, and regional kings occupied Greece until the Macedonian Wars with
Rome made her a client state.

The Polis had lasted four hundred years. During that time it
evolved into the greatest of the antiquarian political systems. But, like all
systems man has created, it would fall. No concept or belief system can remain
static because it must adapt to its time. Evolution brings risks and eventually
the political structure fails to meet the needs of its people.

Monday, November 12, 2012

In 52 B.C. Julius Caesar, near the end of his war against Gaul, had one great enemy left – the charismatic
Arvernian, Vercingetorix. Expelled from Gergovia, for being too rash,
Vercingetorix raised an army on his own, and assumed the role of commander. His
strategy against Caesar was simple -- use superior cavalry to harass the Romans
and drive them away. Caesar, understanding his own weakness, compensated by
recruiting Germans to strengthen his own cavalry units. After a series of
reversals, Vercingetorix was forced to retreat to the walled city of Alesia with his army of
80,000.

No obstacle would deter Caesar, however. He knew direct
attack was impossible because of the hilltop position of the city, so he
planned a siege to starve the Gauls into surrender. Caesar had 12 legions with auxiliaries
ready to bring to bear on the enemy. It was mid-summer, 52 B.C.

The image above shows the Gallic camp, town of Alesia, and
the Roman fortifications.

This image is a view from the west showing the geography.

For this post we focus on the engineering aspects of the
battle, as we did with the Masada and Rhine
bridge posts. Here again the tenacity of the Roman people and the skill of their engineers would provide the margin of victory.

Let’s start with The Conquest of Gaul Book 7 chapter LXIX to
set the scene.

“The town itself was situated on the top of a hill, in a
very lofty position, so that it did not appear likely to be taken, except by a
regular siege. Two rivers, on two different sides, washed the foot of the hill.
Before the town lay a plain of about three miles in length; on every other side
hills at a moderate distance, and of an equal degree of height, surrounded the
town. The army of the Gauls had filled all the space under the wall, comprising
the part of the hill which looked to the rising sun, and had drawn in front a
trench and a stone wall six feet high. The
circuit of that fortification, which was commenced by the Romans, comprised
eleven miles. The camp was pitched in a strong position, and twenty-three redoubts
were raised in it, in which sentinels were placed by day, lest any sally should
be made suddenly; and by night the same were occupied by watches and strong
guards.”

Before the circumvallation could be completed, however, Vercingetorix
sent a party of tribal leaders through the breech on a mission to recruit
allies and bring them back as reinforcements. We move on to chapter LXXII.

“Caesar, on learning these proceedings from the deserters
and captives, adopted the following system of fortification; he dug a trench
twenty feet deep, with perpendicular sides, in such a manner that the base of
this trench should extend so far as the edges were apart at the top. He raised
all his other works at a distance of four hundred feet from that ditch; [he
did] that with this intention, lest (since he necessarily embraced so extensive
an area, and the whole works could not be easily surrounded by a line of
soldiers) a large number of the enemy should suddenly, or by night, sally
against the fortifications; or lest they should by day cast weapons against our
men while occupied with the works. Having left this interval, he drew two
trenches fifteen feet broad, and of the same depth; the innermost of them,
being in low and level ground, he filled with water conveyed from the river.
Behind these he raised a rampart and wall twelve feet high: to this he added a
parapet and battlements, with large stakes cut like stags' horns, projecting
from the junction of the parapet and battlements, to prevent the enemy from
scaling it, and surrounded the entire work with turrets, which were eighty feet
distant from one another.”

Then the Romans began to construct the countervallation.

This photo shows the hills of Alesia from the Roman line.

Above is a portion of the reconstructed Roman fortifications.

“It was necessary, at one and the same time, to procure
timber [for the rampart], lay in supplies of corn, and raise also extensive
fortifications, and the available troops were in consequence of this reduced in
number, since they used to advance to some distance from the camp, and
sometimes the Gauls endeavored to attack our works, and to make a sally from
the town by several gates and in great force. On which Caesar thought that
further additions should be made to these works, in order that the
fortifications might be defensible by a small number of soldiers. Having,
therefore, cut down the trunks of trees or very thick branches, and having
stripped their tops of the bark, and sharpened them into a point, he drew a
continued trench everywhere five feet deep. These stakes being sunk into this
trench, and fastened firmly at the bottom, to prevent the possibility of their
being torn up, had their branches only projecting from the ground. There were
five rows in connection with, and intersecting each other; and whoever entered
within them were likely to impale themselves on very sharp stakes. The soldiers
called these "cippi." Before these, which were arranged in oblique
rows in the form of a quincunx, pits three feet deep were dug, which gradually
diminished in depth to the bottom. In these pits tapering stakes, of the
thickness of a man's thigh, sharpened at the top and hardened in the fire, were
sunk in such a manner as to project from the ground not more than four inches;
at the same time for the purpose of giving them strength and stability, they
were each filled with trampled clay to the height of one foot from the bottom:
the rest of the pit was covered over with osiers and twigs, to conceal the
deceit. Eight rows of this kind were dug, and were three feet distant from each
other. They called this a lily from its resemblance to that flower. Stakes a
foot long, with iron hooks attached to them, were entirely sunk in the ground
before these, and were planted in every place at small intervals; these they
called spurs.

…After completing
these works, having selected as level ground as he could, considering the
nature of the country, and having enclosed an area of fourteen miles, he
constructed, against an external enemy, fortifications of the same kind in
every respect, and separate from these, so that the guards of the
fortifications could not be surrounded even by immense numbers, if such a
circumstance should take place owing to the departure of the enemy's cavalry;
and in order that the Roman soldiers might not be compelled to go out of the
camp with great risk, he orders all to provide forage and corn for thirty days.”

In late September, a relief force of eighty thousand Gauls arrived
and both Gallic forces attacked the Romans – one from the inside and one from
the outside. Caesar sent his cavalry against the relief force while his army
fought off an attack from those trying to breakout from the city. Neither
Gallic army was able to penetrate the fortifications. The next day Vercingetorix
concentrated a new attack force against a weak spot in the inner
fortifications. His army successfully broke through but were attacked from
behind by Roman cavalry that had ridden around the outer ring to their rear.
Caesar, himself, appeared with the troops trying to close the gap and the
Romans were ultimately successful.

With their reinforcements routed, and no further hope to
break the siege, Silesia
surrendered and handed over Vercingetorix to Caesar, who imprisoned him for six
years and then paraded him through Rome
before his execution.

Friday, November 2, 2012

On June 14, 2009 I published the following map of ancient
Sparta showing the location of the villages/clans.

Unfortunately, the map has the tribes incorrectly located. This post ranks fourth in popularity and the thought of readers being exposed to incorrect information is unacceptable to me, so we must rebuild the map.

Searching the web (or looking in the literature) for maps of Sparta is difficult. The few
examples one can find are eighteenth century posters, most notably the one by
the Frenchman Bocage which first appeared in 1783. It appears that I used this
to mark up my own map. I have recently read that Bocage’s map contained misinterpretations from
ancient writings. Of course, he did not have the benefit of modern archeology
which would have been helpful.

Now examine my rework of the map.

And I quote Toynbee’s description of the villages and clans:

“Thus, about 700
B.C., there were at Sparta, over and above the three privileged clan groups,
five locally organized communities, embracing both the clansmen and a large
unprivileged population besides. These five were: Pitane,
the seat of the Agiadai-clan and their clients (containing the burial place
of the Agiad phratria: N.W. of the agora: Limnai,
the seat of the Eurypontidai clan and their clients (tombs of the Eurypontid
phratria, on the street which seems to have branched N.E. from the agora) on
the low lands bordering the Eurotas-bed: Kynosoura,
the long ridge S. of Limnai, occupied by the community from Lakedaimon: andMesoa, between these three, and S. of the
agora, occupied by the Minyai from Therai and their clients. Lastly, Amyklai, two miles S. of the Tiasa (Magoula) river,
left in possession of its old inhabitants.”

Of course, Leonidas was of the Agiad line. Menelaos (husband
of Helen and brother of Agamemnon) was Kynosouran. Forklore has it that
Menelaos migrated from Therapne (old Lakedaimon) to the west bank of the
Eurotos and later the Spartan people became Lakedaimons. There is a shrine to Menelaos
at Therapne.

And there's that fifth village that was part of Sparta -- Amyklai. The map below shows it separation from the others.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

King
Pyrrhus of Epirus is best known to us for his “Pyrrhic” victory over the Romans
at the Battle of Asculum, but that single event does not begin to characterize
the life and the skill of this great military mind of antiquity. Scipio Africanus
described a conversation he had with Hannibal where he asked the Carthaginian
general who he thought was the greatest commander of all time. Hannibal
immediately named Alexander as the greatest. Then, when Scipio pressed him for
his opinion on the second best, expecting Hannibal to name himself or Scipio,
Hannibal replied, “Pyrrhus of Epirus”. Antigonus, when asked who he believed to
be the greatest general said, “Pyrrhus, if he lives to be old.” Pyrrhus was good
enough to rate a spot in Plutarch’s lives, paired with no less a figure than
Gaius Marius. Sadly, the comparison document, which would have paralleled their
lives, was lost.

Pyrrhus
was born in 319 B.C, the son of Aeacides, King of Epirus, and Phthia, second cousin to Alexander the Great. Aeacides was
deposed in 317 B.C. and his family took refuge with Glaukias, King of the
Taurantians. Aeacides died in 313 B.C. so Pyrrhus, as heir, was placed his
father’s throne by Glaukias in 306 at the age of 13. Deposed again in 302 B.C,
Pyrrhus went on to serve under his brother-in-law Demetrius Poliorcetes, son of
Antigonus, satrap of Alexander. In 298 B.C. he was sent to Egypt as a hostage
after a treaty was concluded between Ptolemy and Demetrius. While there,
Pyrrhus married Ptolemy’s step daughter Antigone and used the Egyptian King’s
financing and military aid to regain his throne in 297 B.C. Pyrrhus then moved
the Epirian capital to Ambrakia and began to wage war on Demetrius. At one
point during the war, Pyrrhus was challenged to one on one combat against
Pantaucus, one of Demetrius’ senior officers, and defeated him. He took
Macedonia and was declared king, but the conquest could not be held and Pyrrhus
was pushed out by Lysimachus in 285 B.C.

Plutarch tells us what happened next. "At this time, then, when Pyrrhus had been driven back to Epirus and had given up Macedonia, fortune put it into his power to enjoy what he had without molestation, to live in peace, and to reign over his own people. But he thought it tedious to the point of nausea if he were not inflicting mischief on others or suffering it at other's hands and, like Achilles, could not endure idleness."

He looked
westward.

In 282 the
Thurii tribe, located in the heel of Italy, asked Rome for help against the
city of Tarentum, so Rome sent a small fleet to the Gulf of Tarentum to assess
the situation. More than likely the Romans were exercising a show of support
for the aristocrats of Tarentum who were trying to regain power from the
democratic faction running the city. Whatever the reason, the convoy was
attacked by the Tarentines, and four of the Roman ships were sunk. Rome
dispatched an envoy carrying a protest and he was purposely insulted. The
Tarentines clearly wanted a war and they appealed to Pyrrhus for support. The following year, the consul L.
Aemilianus Barbula was sent with an army and an ultimatum for Tarantum to
compensate for the attack on the convoy or face the consequences. The
Tarentines were at the point of capitulation when the envoy from Pyrrhus
arrived with a message saying the king would lend them a hand.

Pyrrhus,
always the adventurer, was ready to move away from the frustrations of Greek
politics and pursue something more interesting. As the son-in-law of Agathocles
King of Syracuse and a relative of Alexander the Great, he had a legacy to
apply to empire building in the west. Courageous, ambitious, and skillful,
Pyrrhus would present a challenge to the Roman citizen army.

He
arrived in Tarentum in 280 B.C. with 25,000 professional soldiers and 20
elephants.

“When he learned that the Romans
were near and lay encamped on the further side of the river Siris, he rode up
to the river to get a view of them; and when he had observed their discipline,
the appointment of their watches, their order, and the general arrangement of
their camp, he was amazed and said to the friend that was nearest him: ‘The
discipline of these Barbarians is not barbarous; but the result will show us
what it amounts to.’”

That
summer he met the consul Valerius Laevinus in the Battle of Heraclea. The
Romans had never fought the Greek Phalanx before and the horses of their
cavalry were frightened by the elephants. Pyrrhus won the battle, leaving 4,000
men on the field versus Rome’s 7,000, but his victory was dubious because in a
foreign land he could not afford significant losses with no way to obtain new
recruits. After the battle, Pyrrhus, anticipating Hannibal, raced for Rome
hoping to turn the Roman allies to his side, but his efforts to treat with Rome
were unsuccessful, so he headed back to Tarentum. In the spring of 279, he
fought the Romans again at Asculum, winning a second dubious victory. After
that battle he quipped, “If we are victorious in one more battle with
the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."

But now
Pyrrhus had become bored with Italy and looked to move on once again. As
Plutarch tells it, “there came to him from Sicily men who offered to put
into his hands the cities of Agrigentum, Syracuse, and Leontini, and begged him
to help them to drive out the Carthaginians and rid the island of its tyrants;
and from Greece, men with tidings that Ptolemy Ceraunus with his army
had perished at the hands of the Gauls, and that now was the time of all times
for him to be in Macedonia, where they wanted a king.”

Pyrrhus decided Sicily would be
more interesting because it could serve as a gateway to Africa, so he proceeded
there.

Named
king, he sought to rid the island of Carthaginians, but his popularity quickly
declined after he began to act like a tyrant. The Sicilians sought aid to expel
him, but before they took action, Pyrrhus sailed back to Tarentum. The Romans
used two consular armies to push him out of Italy in 275 B.C. and he was finished with Rome for good. Returning to Epirus, Pyrrhus sought war with Antigonus over
Macedonia. After a few victories, he became restless once again.

Cleonymus,
pretender to the Spartan throne asked Pyrrhus to back his claim with an army so
he headed south to Sparta in 272 B.C. He was hesitant to destroy the city
with no walls and delays caused by indecision allowed the Spartans to prepare a
defense. The attack was unsuccessful.

Plutarch tells us what happened
next. “He could accomplish nothing, and met with fresh losses, he went away,
and fell to ravaging the country, purposing to spend the winter there. But Fate
was not to be escaped. For at Argos there was a feud between Aristeas and
Aristippus; and since Aristippus was thought to enjoy the friendship of
Antigonus, Aristeas hastened to invite Pyrrhus into Argos. Pyrrhus was
away entertaining one hope after another, and since he made one success but the
starting point for a new one, while he was determined to make good each
disaster by a fresh undertaking, he suffered neither defeat nor victory to put
a limit to his troubling himself and troubling others.”

Pyrrhus took his army to Argos and
fought a difficult battle within the city walls. His army took the market place
but the fighting was treacherous because the streets were too narrow for
elephants and he did not know the city. During a street battle, Pyrrhus was
injured by a roof tile thrown down on him by an old woman and, before he could
regain his senses, was beheaded by an adversary. The head was sent to Antigonus
who wept at the death of such a renowned family member.

So the world lost an enigma – a man
of many talents as a strategist and military leader, an aristocrat who was
comfortable as king, but also a man who bored easily and gave up what he had
won more often than not. When politics made his conquests stale, Pyrrhus
invariably moved on to the next battle hoping for a better outcome.

Plutarch states “…Pyrrhus would seem to have been
always and continually studying and meditating upon this one subject (warfare),
regarding it as the most kingly branch of learning; the rest he regarded as
mere accomplishments and held them in no esteem. For instance, we are told that
when he was asked at a drinking-party whether he thought Python or Caphisias
the better flute-player, he replied that Polysperchon was a good general,
implying that it became a king to investigate and understand such matters only.

Men
believed that in military experience, personal prowess, and daring, he was by
far the first of the kings of his time, but that what he won by his exploits he
lost by indulging in vain hopes, since through passionate desire for what he
had not, he always failed to establish securely what he had. For this
reason Antigonus used to liken him to a player with dice who makes many fine
throws but does not understand how to use them when they are made.”

Pyrrhic
Victory was coined from a single battle, but Pyrrhic behavior (half winning)
was a self-inflicted disease that would haunt the man his entire life.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The word Phalanx conjures up images of the formidable Greek
battle formation and its impact on warfare over half a millennium. Designed to
be impregnable through its reliance on a structure of unit strength made up of
equal parts, the Phalanx anticipated every power formation in the future of
battle including the modern tank.

Lost in the military view of the Phalanx, however, is the impact it had on the development of the
Greek political system. Indeed, it was also the social leveling force in Greek
society that helped push the Polis into being and sowed the seeds of modern
government.

Our story begins in the Greek Archaic period (800 to 500
B.C.) which saw the development of the Polis as a stable political institution.
But to get to a Polis, we must first weave together the threads of government
and war.

The phalanx was not invented by the Greeks. The earliest
example of the formation was depicted in a Sumerian stone carving from 2,500
B.C. The word phalanx was first used by Homer to describe combat in an organized
battle line as distinguished from combat between individuals. Trouble is we
don’t know what kind of formation Homer was describing, so we can’t know if our
concept of the Phalanx dates from his time.

In the time before the Phalanx, Greek battles were disorganized
affairs consisting of two opposing armies running at each other in a line. Once
the Greeks perfected it, the Phalanx became the default battle formation ancient
armies, until the Romans developed the maniple.

Its political importance is based on the following scenario. At the time the Phalanx came into being, Greek cities contained a mixture of wealthy,
poor, and those rising in economic status -- an emerging middle class. Ruling
kings realized that they could build an army around larger military formations
because more men could now afford to buy the necessary equipment. We can only
speculate about the chicken and egg here. Did the kings coerce at first and
then later the hoplites figured out how to leverage political power, or did the
hoplites refuse to fight unless they were given political rights? I suppose we
can imagine a case where the initial formations were small coerced units which
grew in size when more independent men decided to participate.

Accurate data pinpointing the advent of the Phalanx is elusive. Written evidence is non-existent
so we have to rely of archeology to guide us. The following image, referred to
as the Chigi vase, dates from around 650 B.C.

We might ask how long the phalanx existed before it was
painted on vases, but any answer is only a guess. Certainly the artists had to
be interested in the subject and capable of representing it before it was first
rendered. Unfortunately, the many attempts to validate the dating by translating
the two dimensional formations on pottery into a three dimensional representation
of the Phalanx have not met with much success.

The design of the Phalanx required that all hoplites operate
as a single unit, meaning that each soldier had an equal, and important role,
in the army’s success. Since everyone was an equal, each had the right to
demand political authority when the war was over, because he had made an equal
contribution to victory. This demand for political authority eventually manifested
itself in the strengthening of the legal code, which protected the rights of
the lower classes, and increased their participation in the apparatus of
government.

With the advent of the phalanx, arms buried with the dead
went out of favor because they lost their value as a status symbol. The new middle
class could afford the weapons that would make them equals.

My subject matter derives from a combination of influences,
including efforts to broadly cover the subject matter, finding the truth (and
excitement) in history, and reflecting on topics that stimulate me. But my
readers matter too, because a major goal of this blog is to stimulate interest in
ancient history, so if the posts are not relevant and interesting, I will have
failed.

Looking at the 279 posts, I see about ¼ which have been read
in high volume, ½ in moderate volume, and ¼ largely ignored. In some cases the
former and the latter make me scratch my head at the number of reads, but I won’t
question why people read a particular post in high volume. I'm very interested, however, in determining why good posts have not been read.

Some may have poorly chosen titles that cannot be identified
by a search. Key words are absolutely critical, especially if the post is not recent.
Many of the early posts are not as comprehensive or complete as recent ones.
Often a page or less, they were snippets of history rather than stories from
history. Old posts that are hard to find and lack completeness are justly
ignored.

Still, there are some good topics there, so I’m going to
resurrect them and freshen them up to re-connect them to my readers. The
articles will be re-posted with additional content so they provide the complete picture my readers have come to expect from this blog.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

For this post, we abandon Michael Grant, who has been the
source of our history of Caesar’s last years, and move on to the general
himself writing in The Civil War, or more specifically Commentarii de Bello Civili. The work
has three parts: The Struggle Begins, Securing the West, and the Great
Confrontation -- the latter being our focus here. Cicero, never a man to avoid
hyperbole, praised the books, saying the sections were “like nude figures, upright
and beautiful, stripped of all ornament of style, as if they had removed a
garment.”

The starting point for the Great Confrontation is the
run up to Dyrrhachium, which we have discussed previously, so we’ll begin with
Caesar’s retreat from that inconclusive battle.

Caesar headed south to Apollonia and the Oricum, where he
cared for his wounded, paid the troops, and accumulated grain. Suspecting
Pompey might follow, Caesar sent the baggage train out each sunset, following
at daybreak with his troops unencumbered in case of attack. Pompey attempted
pursuit but abandoned the effort after four days in favor of a different tactic.

You can examine the following map to see the movements of Caesar and Pompey as they danced before the final battle.

Caesar’s plan was to hurry to Domitius who was shadowing
Scipio in Thessaly. Pompey read Caesar’s mind and began a march to Scipio.
Domitius foraging west ran into advance scouts of Pompey who bragged Pompey’s
plan to him. Sensing danger to himself, Domitius diverted south to join Caesar
at Aeginium.

Pompey had spread the lie of a total victory at Dyrrhachium,
endangering Caesar’s march east, because cities would not open their gates to
him. Gomphi resisted and sent word to
Scipio saying they were strong enough to hold out until his rescue, but Caesar took
the city in a 24 hour siege and plundered it as an example. The next town,
Metropolis wisely embraced Caesar as a friend and opened its doors to him.

Meanwhile, Scipio diverted to Larissa and requested that
Pompey join him there.

Pompey’s speeches to his troops were so full of confidence his
commanders got into arguments about the offices and villas they would
commandeer after returning to Rome, following the defeat of Caesar.

Caesar evolved a plan to entice Pompey to battle, not
knowing that Pompey’s lieutenants had already pushed him to engage. With Pompey
settled in Pharsalus, Caesar employed a moveable camp strategy designed to wear
down Pompey if he pursued, but Pompey declined. Then, one day, Caesar noticed
Pompey’s lines farther down from the mountain and decided to offer battle.

Success for both armies hinged on the cavalry deployed on
Caesar’s right (Pompey’s left). Pompey had a huge advantage in cavalry with
some 7,000 available to him, including archers, but Caesar recognized this as a
key vulnerability and pulled a cohort from each legion to create a “fourth
line” of infantry behind the cavalry.

Caesar, aware of the importance of timing, told his
commanders to watch him and expect signals from the waving of his flag. Pompey,
acting on the advice of one of his commanders, decided to have his lines hold
position rather than move forward, expecting Caesar’s troops to charge the whole
distance and tire themselves out. The latter, consisting of the first two
lines, closed half the distance and, observing Pompey’s forces in their initial
position, stopped to conserve their strength. Then, after recovery, they renewed
their charge until the lines were engaged. Pompey’s cavalry moved forward,
forcing Caesar’s troops to give ground. Before they could attack the right
flank of his infantry, however, Caesar signaled the fourth line to enter the
fray. They fought with such vigor, Pompey’s cavalry took to the hills leaving
the archers exposed and they were defeated. At that point, Caesar signaled the
third line of infantry forward to relieve the weary first and second lines.
This created an opening for the fourth line to encircle the left side of Pompey’s
infantry and begin the rout. Pompey, now anticipating defeat, returned to camp
and tent to await the outcome.

With victory on the battlefield complete, Caesar decided to
press his advantage and storm the enemy camp. The camp was taken, but Pompey
had escaped by horse to Larissa. His troops attempted to follow but they
were intercepted by Caesar and forced to surrender. The Pompeian army of 45,00
yielded 15,000 killed and 24,000 prisoners.

Monday, September 3, 2012

History books don’t usually run through the details of
Caesar’s life. They only lay out the big stories -- conquest of Gaul, crossing
the Rubicon, Cleopatra, and the assassination. Here we have recently discussed
the Battle of Dyrrhachium, an under-reported event, so I’m going to carry on a
detailed chronology from there.

Here is a map of Caesar's travels from 48-44 B.C.

Caesar was busy the last three years of his life, yet there
is mystery embedded in his activities. What was he trying to accomplish? Did he
have a plan? How did he intend to solve the problems of the Republic? We don’t
have the answers, but it’s interesting to look at the hints he gives us.

Caesar believed he could win the civil war by defeating his
friend Pompey. Dyrrhachium had been a draw, but a month later when Caesar
prevailed at Pharsalus, Pompey fled to Egypt. The latter was murdered upon his
arrival based on the Egyptian’s mistaken notion it would benefit them to demonstrate
allegiance to Caesar. When Caesar arrived in Alexandria four days later, following
a month of tribute collecting in Anatolia, he was shown Pompey’s head and was
not pleased. The Egyptians had ruined his opportunity to humiliate a defeated enemy
by taking him back to Rome and, more importantly, crossed the line by murdering
a senior Roman leader.

But Caesar still needed money and assumed the role of
arbiter over the dispute between Cleopatra and her brother to gain position in
the battle for control of the Egyptian treasury. Once Cleopatra became his
mistress, Ptolemy and his minions rebelled, were defeated, and the king was
killed. The end result was an alliance with Egypt, rather than annexation,
because Caesar knew he could not trust any governor to manage an Egyptian
province.

Ignoring the unrest in Rome, Caesar decided to seek
additional tribute in the east, so he headed north with the goal of reducing
Pontus as punishment for the murder of Crassus. Then, after its defeat on
August 1, 47 B.C, he headed home via Athens and Tarentum, where he met with
Cicero.

By early fall, Caesar realized that a revolt of Pompey
loyalists in Africa was underway so he began to plan an invasion of Tunis.
Departing on December 25th from Marsala, Sicily, Caesar’s army
traveled to Africa. A combination of food shortage and reluctance on the part
of the Pompeians to fight delayed the climactic battle until early April of 46
B.C.

By July Caesar had returned to Rome and initiated forty days
of triumphs to celebrate the end of the civil war. Included in this
extravaganza was the strangulation of Vercingetorix, his old enemy from Gaul,
who had been kept in prison for six years waiting for the right moment.

But now Pompey loyalists in Spain began to revolt and something
had to be done about them. On November 1, 46 B.C, Caesar left for Spain with
his army, for what would become his final campaign. Again, as in Africa, the
enemy was elusive and it took until March 17th of 45 B.C. before
they were defeated.

In the single year that remained of Caesar’s life, we note
three primary activities: attempts at colonization and resettlement of veterans,
the making of his will, and the extension of his powers. With regard to the
settlements, the Roman army at the end of the civil war consisted of no less
than 35 legions, far more than needed and a dangerous risk to the stability of
the Republic. The dictator initially proposed resettlement lands for the
veterans but there was not enough free land available in Italy so the
settlements were moved to occupied lands. Not east, because the Hellenistic
world refused to be Romanized, but west to Spain and other parts.

In September Caesar returned to his villa at Lavicum to
prepare his will. It left three quarters of the estate to Octavius, grandson of
one of his sisters. The boy would also become his adopted son. Here Caesar
chose family over colleagues because he had a good candidate. Octavian’s intellect
and ruthlessness had impressed his uncle and overcome any concerns about his
frail constitution.

What did Caesar intend to do about the Republic? Fix it
later or let it be? We don’t know. Perhaps the answer lies in the plans he made
in early 44 B.C. to invade Parthia. Battle was certainly something he loved and
going to war put off having to deal with political problems he had no answer
for.

In February of 44, Caesar had his dictatorship converted
into a lifelong office, only a year after he had extended it to ten years. This
new definition of dictator was deeply offensive to Roman traditionalists who
saw it as an emergency office only. In a weak attempt to show modesty, Caesar
refused to be named king when the crown was offered to him by Anthony on
February 15, 44 B.C. Somehow he believed that the title was more dangerous than
the authority, a frighteningly delusional position.

Once his enemies found out about the Parthian campaign, they
decided they couldn’t live with the idea of an absent dictator operating by
remote control. The assassination plan came together quickly and Caesar was
killed. Unfortunately, those Republicans among the conspirators were as delusional
as their victim and leaderless. Brutus decided that Anthony should be
spared, so the public could see that the assassination was not a power grab. This
foolish idealism would be their undoing. The conspirators had no plan for
restoring the Republic or even taking control of the situation. They allowed Anthony
to use Caesar’s funeral oration to build hatred for the conspirators, driving them from Rome while elevating himself.

How many times has this story been told in history?
Idealists strike at the tyrant as an attempt to turn the clock back, but they
fail because they aren't ruthless enough and don’t understand how to take power.

The brilliant fallout of the death of Caesar was the sham
perpetrated on the Roman people by Octavian once he had defeated Anthony at
Actium. He made the principate look like the Republic and everyone fell for the
ruse.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

I recently came upon an article in about.com by N.S.
Gill, their feature writer on ancient history. Its title is 69 Ancient People
You Should Know, and it got me thinking about the most important people of
antiquity – those who would be voted into an Ancients Hall of Fame.

For the purposes of exploring this subject I’m going to
start with Gill’s list, which is as good a place as any. I don’t agree with
many of her selections but I also admit that building a list like this is
subjective. I don’t know if “people you should know” is equivalent to “most
important’ but the latter is the direction I’m taking. I believe fame plays a
significant role here, making it difficult to include those who are generally
unknown to the public in general and me in particular. My sense of antiquity is
that individuals whose fame has endured over the millennia were the most
important. The only qualifier I put on that is that I’m avoiding the infamous whose misdeeds are their claim
to fame.

To return again to the baseball analogy, there are a group
of ancients that I will label first ballot hall of famers. That is individuals
who would be on everyone’s list and would never have their selection questioned.
That list includes,

Do we
add more and by what criteria? A structured approach would dictate selection by
category of accomplishment. For example, the Greeks made significant
contributions in philosophy, science, drama, and poetry, so we should choose
one or more from each of these. Right? But, when you build a list like this and
make any attempt to limit its size, you get into trouble quickly.

It is
generally thought that the four greatest dramatists of all time were Shakespeare,
Aristophanes, Aeschylus, and Euripides. If all three Greeks are in a class with
the Bard, aren’t they all hall of famers?

Philosophy
is tougher still. You start with Plato and Aristotle and then it makes sense to
add Socrates and Thales. Who else? There are so many candidates – Zeno,
Epicurus, Anaximander, Heraclitus, etc.

There are three groups from Gill I have not added: those too
obscure to be eligible, those who didn’t quite make the grade, and those who
are unworthy. In the first group I include Ashkoka (Indian emperor of the
Maurya Dynasty), Hashesput (fifth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt),
Inhotep (a Polymath circa 2650 B.C.), and Sargon the Great (Akkadian king of
2300 B.C.).

The second group contains Agrippa (important as Augustus
right hand man) but not quite good enough, Thermistocles (admiral of the
Athenian Navy), Anaximander, Anaximenes,
and Tacitus. The unworthy contingent includes Nero, Domitian, and Caligula. Not
sure why they were chosen.

Now let’s move on to the people who are missing from Gill’s
list and are worthy. There are seven in this group: Trajan, Marcus
Aurelius, Livy, Leonidas, Lysander, Isocrates, and Cicero. The Golden Age of
the empire is an important period and Trajan and Marcus are its bookends.
Trajan reigned from 98-117 A.D, stabilizing the empire and initiating a period
of calm lasting 82 years. Marcus Aurelius was the last of the dynasty and is
important for his reflective personality and stoic philosophy. It was a sad
irony that Marcus hated wars and yet was fated to fight in them for almost his
entire reign.

If you have Herodotus and Thucydides on the list you have to
have Livy -- Rome’s greatest historian. We are all the poorer because so many
of his books were lost.

In my view, you can’t construct an Ancient’s Hall of Fame without
Spartans, so I have included two: Leonidas and Lysander. Leonidas is famous for
one single event, his defense at Thermopylae. That story has resonated around
the world ever since as an example of courage, honor, and devotion to the
cause. Leonidas has a unique place on the list because his contribution
occurred during a single event that cost him his life, rather than
contributions over a lifetime. Lysander was Sparta’s greatest admiral, largely
responsible for ending the Peloponnesean War in Sparta’s favor.

I thought of including Lycurgus, architect of the Spartan
political system, but we’re not sure a single person with that name existed.

I include Isocrates, at risk, because some would call him
obscure. He labored under the shadow of Plato but his contribution to the
development of educational systems that followed him is unequalled. He was
Athens’ greatest orator and had a great influence over the politics of is day.

So now we reach the end with Cicero, who as a philosopher,
orator, statesman, lawyer, and political theorist had a significant impact on late
Republican Rome. Cicero’s Latin prose was unequalled as he built a Latin
philosophical vocabulary by translating the Greek. His letters, when discovered
during the 14th century, helped launch the renaissance, through
interest created in the writings of antiquity. Cicero’s humanist philosophy
influenced the renaissance, while his republicanism influenced the founders of
the United States.

Now we have a complete list of 53 – an odd number and no
more than an arbitrary stopping point based on subjective criteria. Still it’s
fun to debate the greatest of antiquity. Wish we had a few like them today but unfortunately,
in this modern age, image and money have subverted wisdom and knowledge.

Friday, August 17, 2012

I occasionally do book reviews, but its unusual for me to comment on a novel. The Jericho River is an exception because of its unique approach, which has us learning ancient ancient history while we enjoy the story. To me, any method of proliferating our subject matter is good and this is more fun than most.

The Jericho River chronicles the dream journey of
Jason Gallo, a young man sent to the Land of Fore to rescue his father, William, who
is trapped there. The father, a history scholar, has become unconscious and
doctors are unable to revive him. One of them, the odd Dr. Valencia, convinces
Jason that his father is stuck in a dream world and the only way to save him is
to go there and bring him back. Jason agrees, not knowing what’s in store for
him, and after falling asleep finds himself transported to ancient Mesopotamia
where he has to learn to survive and begin the search for his father.
Immediately captured by bandits, Jason is saved by a lumin in the form of a
lion with a man’s head. Zidu quickly becomes his companion and friend for a
journey down Jericho River – the dream world’s path through history. After
Sumer, they travel to Egypt where they are joined by the exotic priestess Tia
-- ordered to go with them by her guardian, who wants the girl to experience
the world. Tia is strong willed and temperamental but honorable and passionate
in stark contrast to Jason’s irreverent impatience.

The trio journeys to Crete, Babylon, Israel, and Persia guided
by the tiniest threads of information about Jason’s father, while enduring the
attacks of Barbarians and pirates who seek to enslave them. Along the way,
Jason learns how to communicate to other lumins using his thoughts, and becomes
intensely aware of the spiritual world.

At every step of the journey he hears rumors of a mysterious
man, called the Rector, who is after him for reasons unknown.

Down the river our heroes travel to Athens, northern Europe
during the barbarian period after the fall of the Roman Empire, and finally the
medieval world. They are shocked when they meet a group of fairies living in a
secluded wood – angry fairies who have lost the power to help mankind because
they have been replaced by science. Jason learns this is the work of the Rector
and his International Empirical Society -- men dedicated to destroying lumins
and fairies as enemies of progressive thought. He sees the cruelty in this right
away, perpetuated by those who would raise science to the status of gods.

At the climax of the book, Jason’s dream becomes a nightmare
when he comes face to face with the rector and is forced to stand up for what
he has come to believe. He is now a man and must survive on what he learned
from his dreams.

The Jericho River is more than it seems on the
surface and is not just one more adventure story. Advertised to be a subtle
teaching of history in an action adventure wrapper, it is certainly that. You
experience the history first hand from the characters that are living it and
that experience is more real than dates and names in a history book. And while it
may be geared to the adolescent reader, it fits the adult fun equation as well.

If you want to look beneath the fun and get philosophical,
you can do that too by contemplating one of the great moral themes in the
history of man -- the role of science and its impact on human spirituality. Man
has embarked on a 2000 year journey to explain the world and, as he has done
so, gradually replaced fear of the unknown with science. Where does this
process end and what do we have when all is known?

I, personally, don’t want to live in a world of equations
where everything is explained. Give me a fairy or two and let me dream.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Back in March, while writing the post on the Visigoth sack
of Rome, I came upon an interesting story about a siege the Goths conducted
during the time period of the sack of Rome. The author said “this siege was the
largest in history next to Dyrrhachium.” Huh? I had never heard of Dyrrhachium.
After going back to retrieve the reference I couldn’t find it. Thought it was in
Gibbon, but no.

The reference mentioned Pompey against Caesar and I realized
that this battle was alluded to but unnamed in the HBO Rome series. Pompey and
Cicero took refuge in Greece where Caesar eventually attacked them. He won with
an inferior force for reasons I never understood.

After Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C, Pompey retreated
from the city, crossed the Adriatic, and set up camp in Greece. Caesar, not in
a hurry to chase him, decided to stabilize Spain first. He also lacked ships to
transport his troops so he had to wait for them to be constructed. By the end
of the year 49 B.C, a now impatient Caesar was anxious to attack his old
triumvir friend. There were only enough ships for half the fleet but Caesar
decided to proceed immediately even though the January storms would make
passage difficult.

The following map shows the movements of the two armies.

Unknown to Caesar was the blockade set up by Pompey using
his fleet under the command of Bibulus. Caesar was very fortunate in that he
caught Bibulus off guard with a winter crossing and was able to reach the coast
of Epirus (1). When Caesar sent the fleet back to retrieve the rest of the
army, it was intercepted, blocked, and many ships were lost (2). Caesar now faced
the prospect of fighting Pompey’s army of 45,000 with an army of 15,000. He
attempted to treat with Pompey several times but was rebuffed. Resigned to
doing battle, Caesar instructed the newly arrived Anthony to break the blockade and head north to
meet him at Dyrrhachium (3,4). Pompey, hearing of Caesar’s movements, marched
from Macedonia to try and get between Caesar and Anthony (5). Unsuccessful, he
set up camp along the coastline south of Dyrrhachium.

Caesar, using his classic playbook, decided to build a
circumvallation around the army of Pompey. The latter responded by constructing
his own fortifications opposite Caesar. By the end of spring Pompey’s army was
suffering from lack of fodder and needed to break out. Some Gallic horsemen
defected to Pompey, telling him of a hole in Caesar’s line to the south. Pompey
attacked there, forcing Caesar to retreat in order to save his remaining troops
(6).

Caesar then took Gomphi by siege and then defeated Pompey
for the final time at Pharsalus. Pompey escaped to Alexandria but was murdered
by Ptolemy.

Friday, July 27, 2012

I wanted to introduce you to the Leonidas Trilogy, a series of three historical novels by my friend Helena Schrader. The trilogy divides Leonidas life into three parts: Boy of the Agoge, A Peerless Peer, and A Heroic King. I placed a youtube introduction to the series in the left hand column for you to see, so have a look.

Helena also writes her own blog, Sparta Reconsidered, which you can access through a link on the blog list below.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

The most important component of any blog is the content,
which attempts to communicate information to the reader specific to the subject
orientation of the site, but no blog can be successful unless the author finds
ways to stimulate his readers and get them to return to the site.

There is a great deal of information that comes along with the
words, such as images, maps, and charts that help frame the content of the
postings and behind the article content sits the publications which act as source
materials for the content.

I have recently been working to expand access to my background
materials as a way to provide readers a pathway to more information, when they want to go deeper into the subject
matter. The tools for this new effort are Goodreads and Facebook.

For those of you not familiar with Goodreads -- you should
be. This site collects lists of books by subject and includes member reviews of
those books. You can put your own library up there as a contribution or just
read what others have to say about books you’re interested in. Another feature
allows you to search for booksellers who have the book and buy it right in
Goodreads. You can also join any one of a variety of forums on different topics
where members openly discuss issues that matter to them.

I have 136 of the books in my Goodreads booklist including
about 80 books on the ancient world. Every book I use for my postings gets
added to my booklist there.

To make supplementary materials available, I have created a
Facebook page for the blog which you can see at:

Here I will be adding all of the image materials from the
articles I post, including charts, artifacts, and maps of the ancient world -- located in the photo section organized by category. Not all of the
materials are up there yet but I’m working on it. Take a look and see what
you think.

Friday, June 15, 2012

We have been discussing the development of Stoicism as the
leading Hellenistic philosophy so that we might look at its relationship to
Christianity -- the theory being that Christianity has some Stoic ideas in it.

Think of the way early Christian leaders (circa 100 A.D. and
beyond) viewed their situation. They believed in Jesus as the Messiah, based on
the Gospels and the teaching of Paul, but those beliefs were missing a substantive
philosophical framework, or more correctly a theology, that could be taught and
defended. The only way to overcome this lack of structure was to create it.

But there is a problem with creating this framework -- objectivity.
How do men living in a Hellenistic world permeated by Stoicism develop a
Christian theology without being influenced by Stoicism? Only with difficulty
it turns out. As discussed in a previous post, the Christian apologists had two
adversaries: splinter religious groups like the Arians and Gnostics and more
seriously the classic Greek philosophers who enjoyed centuries of wide
acceptance. The reputation of the Greeks was too strong to dismiss out of hand,
so many Christian thinkers made peace with the Greeks, either my attributing
Christian beliefs to them or finding Christianity in their philosophy.

My source book for this discussion is The Emergence of
the Catholic Tradition by Jaroslav Pelikan. Professor Pelikan was an
eminent scholar in the history of the Catholic Church and Professor of
Ecclesiastical History at Yale from 1972-1996. He wrote a five volume set on
the Catholic tradition including the work cited above which serves as volume
one.

Pelikan cites the closing of the Greek philosophical school
by Justinian in 529 A.D. as the triumph of the church over pagan philosophy. Or
as Gibbon put it,

“this was a time when
Christian theologians superseded the exercise of reason, resolved every
question by an article of faith, and condemned the infidel or skeptic to
eternal flames.”

We start by highlighting the most famous work of Boethius
(executed 522 A.D.) called Consolidation of Philosophy. This paradoxical
work attempts to reconcile Greek philosophy and the Christian religion. The
paradox derives from the fact that the book reads like its writer is a secular
philosopher and not a devout Christian. Pelikan accuses Boethius of pressing
reason to the boundaries of faith.

Pelikan also suggests that the triumph of Christianity over Greek
philosophy was “Pyrrhic” because the victory by the former included the absorption
of some of the tenets of the latter.

Let’s look at the example of transubstantiation. The fourth
Lateran council of 1215 A.D. decreed that the sacrament of the altar .. the
bread is substantiated into the body of Christ. Substance in this case is no
more than the metaphysics of Aristotle as laid out in his fifth book on that
subject. As Aristotle says, “A substance is not predicated of a subject but
everything else is predicated of it. That which, being present in all such
things as are not predicated of a subject, is the cause of its being, as the
soul is of the being of an animal.” It follows then that if you are using
Aristotle’s definitions, then you are embracing Aristotle. It’s not surprising
that this issue has been cited as an example of the problem of “Hellenization
of Christianity.”

Indeed, Christian doctrine still bears the marks of pagan
philosophy which is the price paid for
the triumph over it. How high a price? We need to look no farther than the apologists
to answer that question.

Extremists labeled many of the theologians of the early
church hellenizers, a purposeful derogatory sobriquet. They said of Origen,
“While his manner of life was a Christian, contrary to law he played a Greek,
and introduced Greek ideas.” They were critical of his kinship with the Greek
philosophers regarding the immortality of the soul.

The same can be said of Tertullian. Unsure of the
characterization of the soul in the scriptures, he called upon the Stoics to
help him explain it as a spiritual essence.

And Clement of Alexandria describes virtue as “a will in
conformity to God and Christ in life, rightly adjusted to life everlasting.”
This is basic Stoic metaphysics.

Now we can see how the Greek philosophers in general (Plato
and Aristotle) and the Stoics in particular were able to influence Christian
theology. This influence was undoubtedly caused by:

1. The longstanding assimilation of Stoicism into
Hellenistic thought and its subliminal influence over those living at that
time.

2. The lack of a philosophical foundation in the Christian
religion which was originally built solely on the facts of the life of Jesus of
Nazareth.

3. The thought processes of early Christian theologians whose
intellects required examining all fundamental ideas, even those
originating from the pagan enemy.

At the end of the day, our discussion becomes esoteric because the "Pyrrhic" character of the Christian victory over pagan philosophy was forgotten long ago. Those elements formerly Greek stand today as Christian dogma.